Homie? I want you to know that while I am going to be inflammatory, I am not insulting you. In a slightly sane world, that should be fine.

NEVER work with children. “Hey kids. You can go home or you can stay with me and a few others and learn how to use a computer!”. At best you are setting yourself up for some awkward phone calls when Little Jimmy gets caught looking at something his parents don’t approve of.

If you are a close family friend and the parents understand what you are going to be teaching their kid (and obviously want you to teach it), go for it. If you are just watching them while they eat orange slices? Don’t fucking go anywhere near that. Let the teachers who actually train in how to handle these situations do it.

And the other aspect: Kids (and most adults) are not rational or intelligent. They aren’t going to take “Hey, if Susie sends you nudes don’t put them on this server because it will get me sent to prison as a diddler” as education on why they should not fucking do that.

If you ever want to get scared straight as it were? Take a teacher out for drinks (and you better pay for them!). You’ll hear LOTS of horror stories and get even a glimpse into the kind of hell they have to put up with.

The show Black-ish (like a lot of Kenya Barris’s work) has a LOT of problems. But the number of times teacher friends have shared https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jqmj0ILwfM. And it is not at all exclusive to black people (or even men).

Just a general warning:

It is one thing to provide something for family. It is another thing to be a person in authority providing one for an org. And kids are horrible and basically all have cameras everywhere they go. They WILL do something horrible and, depending on what that something is, you might now be liable for a lot of stuff you don’t want to be.

You don’t want that smoke. They can use google drive. Or you can talk to one of the companies that host next/own clouds for people and ask for a discount since it is the boy scouts.

If you are thinking in terms of building a widget or making an industrial process, it makes perfect sense. Something like a wristwatch is the kind of innovation a LOT of people more or less simultaneously made and it is just impossible to definitively prove what country the first watch was made in. Even figuring out who was the first to file becomes a mess. Same with factory processes where the players who would even have the ability to iterate are often counted on fingers and toes.

But software (and research) in a global society is a real mother fucker. Because now the entire world can more or less see everything and reproducing things is fairly trivial. And… it isn’t like the patents actually matter all that much when so much gets done overseas. China Don’t Care but also the EU doesn’t really either and so forth. Sure there are avenues to try to pursue a studio using the patented Nemesis System but… at best you are going to be tied up in courts for years trying to get a judge to insist that a company in Germany needs to send you a check.

For the exact same reason that “fair use” is still so incredibly nebulous and twitch streaming/let’s plays still exist.

NOBODY is crazy enough to want to take that to the courts. Because maybe you get a judge who has “common sense”. Maybe you get an old white guy who thinks Pong was too complicated and decides that you are wrong. At which point you have now made a bunch of legal precedent for REALLY stupid stuff.

Its also kind of why so much stuff about video games actually never gets patented. It is playing with fire.

I ANAL and am not a lawyer.

The verbiage on this is RIDICULOUSLY specific (as patents generally should be) to the point that I refused to even pass the PDF through an OCR system and instead will trust that site’s transcription

    (1) There must be a PC, console or other computing device and the game is stored on a drive or similar storage medium.

    (2) You can move a character in a virtual space.

    (3) You must be able to summon a character. They call it a “sub character” by which they mean it’s not the player character, but, for example, a little monster such as a Pokémon that the player character has at its disposal.

    Then the logic branches out, with items (4) and (5) being mutually exclusive scenarios, before reuniting again in item (6):

    (4) This is about summoning the “sub character” in a place where there already is another character that it will then (when instructed to do so) fight.

    (5) This alternative scenario is about summoning the “sub character” at a position where there is no other character to fight immediately.

    (6) This final step is about sending the “sub character” in a direction and then letting an automatic battle ensue with another character. It is not clear whether this is even needed if one previously executed step (4) where the “sub character” will basically be thrown at another character.

All of those criteria must be met for this trap card to be triggered (shit… Yugioh lawyers getting revved up now).

Step 4 specifically covers the case where you summon your little guy to fight someone else. As worded, that actually would impact a Summon in every JRPG and Final Fantasy just got sweaty. Step 5 summons a character as an assist or to replace the main character in a fight (so… Pokemon).

What I find most interesting is that step 6 specifically says “automatic battle”. Which… to my Not A Lawyer brain, means this doesn’t even cover Pokemon since you specifically give your mons battle commands. Err, aside from S01E01 Pikachu who did not give a fuck. And then Charizard. And probably a dozen more pokemons after I stopped watching The Son Of Mr Mime’s Adventures. But, from what little I saw of it, it DOES cover Palworld where you just summon your pals to do work for you or fight for you. And it potentially covers Final Fantasy and Ichiban’s Like a Dragons (the Poundmates, not the Sujimon)…

Which is probably the most interesting thing and why I think Pokemon Co is going to be ridiculously selective of who they try to sue. Because any of the big hitters can just say “Dumbfucks, we were doing this before Game Freak even existed”. Whereas indie devs are small enough they don’t want to risk it.

It might be worth keeping an eye on MinnMax as Haley MacLean IS a lawyer who actually specializes in video game IP but I suspect this is too close to her day job for her to publicly speak about it even with the “not legal advice” disclaimers. Which hopefully guarantees she actually talked about it on one of the podcasts this week and I just haven’t looked yet.

Not sure about every pack, but every kit (which is usually worth grabbing just because it is a cheap way to get the basics and a couple colors of thread) definitely does. But it is one more thing to faff about with and you still need to thread the wire loop. Versus just putting some thread in the slot and pulling/pushing.

Sewing machines also are much worse for patching things.

Just think through the logistics of how you would use a sewing machine to reinforce the knee of some pants or to reinforce/repair a well loved stuffy.

If you are actually Making things, a sewing machine is well worth it. But it doesn’t replace knowing a few basic hand stitches.

Depending on where you live, those thrift store shirts are not material you really want to use for anything you would touch. “Lightly worn” means very different things in different areas and the more bougie areas tend to get picked clean REAL fast by all the “life hack” kids. And the less bougie areas… there is very much an argument for leaving the thrift shops for those who need them but that ship has sailed.

But yeah. I would just add on that it is well worth it to pay the extra buck or two for some self threading needles and a thimble. If you can’t thread a needle for physical reasons (e.g. vision or dexterity limitations) you probably don’t want to be doing too much sewing for things that experience wear, but not having to thread a needle is borderline life changing. Just stick the needle in something to stabilize it and then pull the thread down into the eye and boom, you are done.

Which puts you ahead of the curve. But you are still depending on enough other people to be watching every update and so forth.

I am not saying I am much better. But it is one of those things where anyone considering the selfhosted Fun should REALLY spend some time dealing with software supply chains and the like. Too many people just figure “it is open source so it is safe” or, even in this thread, assume something is more or less safe based upon what app pulls it.

If anything it is easier to self audit the script.

But nobody ever actually audits the stuff they run so…

Too lazy to dig for it myself but would love to see someone do a deep dive on what an “upgrade” actually would be.

How many of the gen 1 parts are just plug and play in a gen2 chassis/mobo? How much of the gen2 parts can be put into the old gen 1 case? The upgraded heatpipes already make that questionable.

I am obviously not the biggest fan of Framework Corp (and I genuinely think they are contributing to significantly more e-waste than traditional “upgrade” paths). But this also feels like a good use case to study for anyone who actually thinks they are going to meaningfully upgrade their laptop every 5-10 years without just buying a new laptop.

Because didn’t the 16 just get a pretty massive (possibly backwards compatibility breaking?) design upgrade like last year? I remember all the tech youtubers (except GN for whatever reason…) talking about the adjustable keyboard layout for people who hate their wrists.

Which is also one of the dark secrets of desktop PCs. Okay, AM4 was fucking insane and that STILL gets new CPUs? But, generally speaking, if you are the kind of person who “upgrades” your PC every 6-10 years (so roughly a console gen)? Your “upgrade” is a full rebuild more often than not but you re-use that nvme so it still counts.

The only companies that can really compete with Valve for scale are MAYBE Asus. And if they just release approximately the same SKU as Valve or one with minor updates they can maybe get some market share but… why would you not buy the Valve one in that case?

So we instead get a case where they leverage something closer to their gaming laptops SKU… and the price goes up a lot. Although, to be clear, 1k for a “gaming laptop” is actually a REALLY good price… which is why gaming laptops are a stupid purchase.

And that mostly just leaves the Aya Neos and GPDs of the world. They more or less paved the way for Valve but they just can’t produce (and import) at scale to compete so you mostly get niche SKUs that specifically target a type of gaming (often emulation) or come with keyboards everyone hates and so forth.

Which sucks because I really would like there to be competition to encourage Valve to keep pushing the envelope… and Valve would likely like it so they don’t have to release a new gameboy every other year.

We are a numbers species

And we only have power when we act in numbers towards a focused goal.

This is why we (should) have (more) Unions instead of just “Negotiate for yourself and everyone will benefit”. And that, inherently, needs leaders who know how to work towards a shared purpose.

Everyone should work towards making the world a better place. But we also need to understand what we are actually working towards and what those “somethings” actually can accomplish.

The issue is what this even accomplishes.

Traction is indeed important. But people also get exhausted (how many folk were whinging about “first I needed to make my avatar a rainbow and now it needs to be black? Oh, you mean a black box. Whoopsie” back in 2020?). It is why “just do something, it doesn’t matter what” is such a stupid fucking mentality because you waste the general good will towards pointless slacktivism and then people stop caring by the time you have an idea of how to utilize them.

Which… is where the Rossman comes in. I have a lot of issues with him as a human being but as an activist he is REALLY effective… for Right to Repair… for repair shops. But he has also made his career on convincing everyday people that he is fighting for them when he is really using them as ammunition for making sure his repair shop (that totally doesn’t violate any labor laws…) can stay running because OBVIOUSLY this lobbyist movement to support activity that requires a full hotplate and high powered microscope is something that everyday consumers care about (sort of in the sense of having options, but at this scale the poison pill apple compliance is actually probably just as good, if not better, for consumers)

I haven’t been able to even find a good explanation of what this is even supposed to accomplish. But, dime to a dollar, it is Rossman et al demonstrating how quickly he can mobilize The Internet as a negotiating tactic for whatever he and his lobbyist buddies are pushing on right now.

PM->DM was a mix of making it more obvious that those were NOT private in the slightest and to better align with marketing (“send a Direct Message to the celebrity you are stalking!”)

I am not sure when “pfp” took over but I’ve noticed over the past 3 or 4 months a LOT of random requests for a DM on discord of people asking where I got my pfp… which is literally a screenshot from a cartoon in the 00s. So I assume this is related to selling avatars to people on the game social networks?

Precident has been set since the dawn of the net to choose which elements you download & execute, e.g. text only, no script, no autoplay video

Has it? Maybe during the usenet days but even then most stuff was downloaded as a digest. And basically once we hit “the good internet” with geocities et al, images were everywhere and things kind of spiraled from there.

Again, this is a world I would prefer and I love/hate that there are browser plugins to get stripped versions of websites and the like. But precedent wise? I… don’t think we were using the same internet for the past 30-40 years.

I DO think the argument for power and (at least where it is monitored) data usage could be a thing. But I am pretty sure the outcome would be landing pages that EVERYONE hates and bypasses.

Also obligatory: Legal Precedent is a very specific thing that is almost entirely based around court rulings and cases. And there are a lot of reasons almost nothing related to The Internet or piracy ever goes to trial.

Can a website operator prove I consented to their terms if I block their consent popup?

If you continue to use their website than that is a you problem. It is no different than actively ignoring the signage at the local kroger saying “no guns allowed”

I also don’t consent to having billboards all around me or ads literally mailed to me in the post.

Which is a very different mess with very different laws governing it. That said? You would be shocked how easy it is to complain about a billboard ad and get it to go away.

The difference is that you are choosing to engage in “business” with that website but insisting that you get to dictate the terms without agreement from the other party. If you don’t want to disrupt your sovereign cit-err, the sacntity of your computer: Don’t go to that website or any website that runs those ads.

Don’t get me wrong. I run an adblocker AND a dns level adblocker and have zero qualms about it. I am not sure if I consider it “ethical” but, from a legal standpoint… yeah, it probably does fall into the same bucket as piracy.

Yes and no.

Yes, they have every single version of every single comment you ever made and can fetch whichever one they want whenever they want.

But reddit is massive. That is WHY it depends so much on unpaid mods (like other social media sites of a much smaller size…).

So unless you are a “top influencer”, the most they’ll do is revert your deleted comments maybe one extra version. So if you use one of the tools that edit it prior to deletion, you are in good-ish shape.

Which is what we saw during the “protests”. Plenty of people (self included) saw their comments come back. But the people who ran one of the editing deleters (with a non-default message) saw their edited messages return. Because that was the most recent on the stack.

Rate limited so you might have to run it a few times over the course of a week but https://github.com/j0be/PowerDeleteSuite